AwareManager Smooths DevOps Workflow With AWS

The Challenge

AwareManager provisions services to clients through approximately 400 websites supported by the Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud platform. The websites host applications that integrate with database servers also supported by AWS. To enable the internal software team to focus all of its efforts on developing and fine-tuning website and database applications, AwareManager decided to partner with an outside firm to manage and monitor the AWS infrastructure.

“Our primary software expertise is in development, so to achieve a DevOps functional process, we wanted to identify a partner that could bridge the gap between development and operations,” says Angus McCandlish, the Head of Software Development for AwareManager. “In addition to making sure our websites and databases keep running at optimal levels, we wanted to find a partner who could advise on best practices for the public cloud and which AWS services to deploy.”

“Mission completed our AWS network deployment project in two weeks that would have taken us two months, given our bandwidth. That represents a significant opportunity cost-savings since it allowed us to roll out new services to clients sooner.”

Angus McCandlish
Head of Software Development

The Solution

AwareManager found the perfect partner to answer this challenge in 2012 and has continued to collaborate with Mission ever since. Tapping into Mission’s Managed AWS Cloud and Managed DevOps offerings, AwareManager relies on Mission to manage and monitor two AWS infrastructure environments 24x7 in multiple regions in the US and Europe.

Mission ensures AwareManager clients can access the 400 websites and their applications as well as the back-end databases at all times. If any technical issues occur, Mission applies initial triage and resolution and is able to solve the majority of incidents. For those incidents requiring escalation, Mission contacts the AwareManager software team and works together to resolve the issue.

Results

Mission monitors website and application performance 24x7 for AwareManager to ensure smooth customer experiences. The partnership with Mission and the use of the AWS public cloud platform has also generated several key benefits for AwareManager:

• Satisfies client SLA requirements for application performance and uptime.
• Resolves infrastructure performance issues before clients experience any service degradation.
• Removes burden of deployments and ongoing support.
• Enables internal IT team to focus more time on application improvements.
• Validates design and architecture strategy by relying on Mission for cloud and AWS domain expertise.